Underground Radar to Locate Post-Katrina Damage

Underground radar technology developed at Louisiana Tech is helping to document underground infrastructure damage that has gone undetected following Katrina.

This radar technology is a pipe-penetrating scanning system based on a new technology called ultra-wide band (UWB) pulsed radar.

UWB allows for the inspection of buried pipelines, tunnels and culverts to detect fractures, quantify corrosion and determine the presence of voids in the surrounding soil often caused by storm water leaks and flooding.

Developed at Louisiana Tech’s Trenchless Technology Center, this technology incorporates leading-edge simulation, electronics, robotics, signal processing and three-dimensional (3-D) renderings in a package that can be mounted on existing pipe-inspection robots.

Dr. Arun Jaganathan, associate professor of civil engineering and construction engineering technology at Louisiana Tech, began developing this technology as the basis for his Ph.D. dissertation research.

Partnering with fellow Louisiana Tech researcher Dr. Neven Simicevic and others, his vision was to eventually develop it into a tool that municipal engineers can use for their routine pipeline condition assessment.

“Our UWB technology was based on recognizing the need within the trenchless industry for an advanced pipeline inspection tool that can quantify the structural integrity of buried municipal pipes like sewers and storm drains, and be able to see through the pipe wall,” said Jaganathan. 

“The radar system emits ultra-short electromagnetic pulses from inside of a sewer pipe and captures the signals ‘back-scattered’ from the pipe to determine the condition of various layers hidden behind the wall which we cannot directly see using visual tools such as a camera.  The radar is integrated into a robot which crawls through a pipe and relays the data back to the operator in real time.”

Following successful testing and development, Jaganathan and other researchers came to Slidell in the summer of 2013 to pinpoint the spots in the city that would be most beneficial for using the UWB, and to test and investigate the underground infrastructure issues.

As had been predicted by the group in their initial research, compromised infrastructure was able to be seen using the UWB technology and, most importantly, became provable.

“This technology is unique in its capability to generate high resolution images which allow engineers to inspect a particular spot in detail,” Jaganathan said.

“Unlike many other radars, our system does have to be in contact with the pipe wall and this provides capability for rapid inspection to finish scanning a long pipe in a timely manner.”

Source: Lousiana Tech University

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Taxonomy

• Technology
• Disaster Relief
• Infrastructure
• Robotics